The Last Time Girls Were Made of Glass
by rodevo
Summary: Sometimes girls are made of glass. Sometimes, even when you don't mean to, you break them....


Disclaimer: They don't belong to me...

Author's Note: I haven't forgotten _Bleeding Through the Edges of the World_ and hope to get back to it shortly. This is a oneshot that poked at me until I broke down and wrote it. I'm not completely satisfied with the way it turned out, but it's as close to what I wanted it to be as I think I can make it. Hope you enjoy it. I'd love to hear your feedback.

Summary: Sometimes girls are made of glass. Sometimes, even when you don't mean to, you break them...

**The Last Time Girls Were Made of Glass  
**

Dean Winchester has fucked countless girls up against the walls of diners and restrooms and kitchenettes in truck stop motels. There's only one of those he regrets and she was the one who insisted, said it had to be that way because--this is how you leave me. She was the one who knew the whole thing from beginning to end and he never did figure out if she was psychic or if she just took one look at him and realized what she was in for.

* * *

You'd think it would be the ghosts of children that would bother him the most, but it's not. 

"Dean, are you okay?"

"Fine."

"Because--"

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

There ought to be a limit to how many times one person is allowed to ask the same question. A fucking lifetime limit. Because if Sam asks him if he's okay one more time, Dean will not be responsible for what he'll do. Guns will be involved.

* * *

Dean sees every girl, every woman, in terms of what she's made of. Some of them are plastic, brittle hair and makeup, scared to death that everyone will see that they're nothing but what someone else has made them. Some of them are fire, hot and fast and impossible to get close to. Cassie was steel, stretched so thin she could cut you to the bone, yet not strong enough--too thin--to stand against a heavy wind, but steel all the same, never going to break, or at least Dean would never break her.

* * *

Dean takes the first shower and takes inventory at the same time. A good-sized bruise along his ribs, it aches when he lifts his arm, but it's not going to slow him down much. A tender spot on the back of his head where that bitch threw him into the banister--solid oak banister too--damn old houses, built too sturdy, like they could outlast ghosts. He's got a few miscellaneous cuts and scrapes--she threw knives at him for fuck's sake! But overall--not bad--and Sam got out without a scratch, a pretty good night by Winchester standards. 

There's still some hot water left when he steps out of the shower and he wraps a towel around his waist, digs out the first aid kit and puts butterfly bandages on his forearm from where the ghost threw a butcher knife at him. His stomach growls and he laughs without smiling. Yeah, it doesn't matter how the job goes--a guy's gotta eat.

He knows what he wants on nights like these, after a job like this--a dark smoky bar, and there are few enough of them left these days, a pool game, a girl. Things that he can feel and taste and smell--the carved-up surface of a battered wooden table, the stickiness of an old linoleum floor that never gets really clean, the sweaty cool feel of a longneck in his hand, the swirl of smoke up next to the ceiling, pool players in grimy gimme caps with wear marks on the brim, and the smooth softness of some girl's skin right next to his, her warm breath on his neck, lips that promise and later deliver everything a guy could want. He doesn't care if they do it in a parking lot, in her car, in the shadows of the back room when no one's looking--but damn he wants it. Tonight he wants it bad.

* * *

Dean hates the ghosts of lonely girls the most, girls who died alone and no one cared. They either become these quiet pathetic loser ghosts that drift and sigh and scare the everlasting shit out of people for no reason or they're just the meanest angriest ghosts ever. Jesus, couldn't they just get out of the house while they were alive? 

Someone told him once that being alone was not the same as being lonely, but he doesn't believe it. What the hell? Who wants to be alone.

* * *

He met her in a truckstop diner in Nebraska when they were both traveling alone. 

The fluorescent lights buzz and there's something about the way things look that's so sharp-edged it's painful, something that tells you that it's three o'clock in the fucking morning and what is she doing here and for that matter what is he? There's a scattering of other people in the place--truckers, all of them, in Carhart vests and heavy flannel shirts--no one else he gives a damn about that's for sure.

He sits at a table near the door and drinks the first cup of coffee in two quick gulps, like it's ice-cold not piping hot. He watches her watch/not-watch him. She's interested all right. And he's interested--oh yeah he's interested! Because 1) hey, she's a girl! And 2) she's sort-of, not-really-pretty but ohmygod someday she's going to be beautiful and doesn't even know it yet. And 3) because she's sitting in a truckstop at goddamned three in the morning with books and papers and an honest-to-god laptop spread out in front of her and the only other person he's ever seen do that is Sammy. And thinking about Sammy sets a hollow ache up in his bones about how fucked up his family is and how they ought to be together but they're not and he is so not sleeping alone tonight even if he has to seduce the waitress who's fifty if she's a day and is wearing support hose.

He pours himself a second cup of coffee from the pot the waitress left him and walks over and pulls out a chair and gives her his patented--oh god, girls fucking die for this-- smile and says, "Hi, my name is Dean."

* * *

Three Things Dean will never tell Sam about Women 

1. How many

2.That time in Orange City when a woman actually--no kidding--peppered him with birdshot when he brought her daughter home five hours late.

3. How once he talked a girl out of jumping off the roof of her house, saw her in the rearview mirror on the way out of town and went back and sat with her on the steep-sloping roof two and a half stories up until the sun came up and she was willing to go back inside and let him call an ambulance and her parents and a friend who could come and stay with her.

* * *

Dean comes out of the bathroom pulling on a shirt and grabbing his jacket. "Hey you want--" be begins but 'to grab something to eat' dies on the vine when he sees Sam sacked out on one of the beds sound asleep. 

He grins with his teeth showing and shakes Sam by the boot. Sam starts up with that half-snort he makes when he's not quite awake yet. "Yeah, what?" He scrubs a hand across his face. "You going someplace?"

Dean looks at him like, _duh_--didn't they just talk about that bar a half block down when they got out of the car? "Food?" he says like it's a question, which for him it never is. "Maybe a beer? Get cleaned up and let's go."

"Yeah. Yeah," Sam shakes his head. Dean isn't sure what his problem is. They've both done exactly the same things today--drove three hundred miles, visited an old house, got knocked around by a ghost, asked questions all over town, salted and burned, and he's still hopping to go, practically jumping out of his skin to get out of this room and go somewhere, do something.

"You want to stay here? I can bring you something back--you could meet me there?" The second one is the option Dean prefers, figures Sam knows it too so there's no need to say. Dean knows how to relax in a pool hall or corner bar; it smells right, the sounds are right. It's not important, though--he can get food, come back--

"No, you know what," Sam says, swinging his legs off the bed. "I'll find you. Give me--I don't know--an hour--yeah," He nods as if he has a whole other conversation going on inside his head. "That'll work."

* * *

Dean loves women. In the collective sense, loves that women exist in the world, loves that there are young beautiful women who laugh and grab his ass and walk out to his car with him like it's the greatest thing in the world that they're alive and that right now they're with him.

* * *

She tells him right off that her name is Helen, but for some reason he always thinks of her as 'the I-80 truckstop girl'. There have been lots of other girls, lots of names he doesn't remember or never even knew--that waitress in Tampa, that really hot--what was her name--cheerleader in Oskaloosa, the virgin in Augusta. 

But this time, with her, it isn't that he doesn't remember her name, it's that he isn't sure he ought to.

This is what he knows about the I-80 truckstop girl right off the bat: she's not from around there--because if there's one thing Dean knows, besides guns and demons, it's every accent in the country, she's a graduate student in some subject that's too long to read upside down, she's wary of him, a stranger at 3 o'clock in the morning, and she's totally rocking on his smile.

"Car break down?" he asks as he leans back in his chair and tries to look harmless and sexy at the same time.

"Uhm," she frowns--she looks goddamned amazing when she frowns as if all her future beauty potential has suddenly been made manifest. "Hm. Yeah," she admits and this is where the wariness shows through--how much to tell him, how much it matters if he knows. Doesn't matter--that's what she won't know--he doesn't need to know where she's from or who she is or anything beyond that she's here right now in this truckstop diner with him.

He leans toward her and starts talking about how he likes to drive and what a fine thing a good car is. And driving--anywhere--damn, he's been a lot of places. It doesn't matter what he says--cars or sports or the weather--it's his voice and how he says it and how after awhile it sounds like sex talk even if it isn't.

But he hasn't even hardly gotten going when she stops him with two fingers against his lips. "Stop,' she says. "Ok." She's nervous, her fingers shake against his mouth. She licks her own lips, tongue darting out quick, small and pink, and he has to shift in his chair because he wants her right fucking now--shock the fifty-year-old waitress and the truckers dozing in their chairs, because he could fuck her on the table under the harsh florescent lights and he wouldn't even care.

"Ok," he agrees and takes her hand.

* * *

The list of girls Dean Winchester hasn't forgotten can just about be counted on the fingers of one hand. And at least two of those have names he never knew.

* * *

The tension in Dean's shoulders unwinds when he walks through the door into the bar. There's a band even though it's only Thursday. They're not very good, but they're loud and there are people moving on the dance floor and laughter that's loud enough to hear over the music from the band, movement and light and the intimation of safety, though it's not really safe, not even here. 

He wants to think about nothing, to buy his beer and maybe grab a burger and not think about the job, especially not that. He spots at least three girls right away that he could be happy hooking up with and that simple fact makes his lips quirk up into something that would be a smile if there were anybody paying enough attention to make it worthwhile.

_The ghost's name was Abigail Foster_.

_Shit_.

Dean signals the bartender, downs half his beer in one gulp and signals for another one.

She died just five years ago--Abigail Foster--and no one remembered her. Dean had walked into the house first and she'd been right there, like she spent all her time in the front hallway, waiting.

"Have you come for me?" she'd asked.

He hates the lonely ones, the ones whose hearts were broken, the ones no one ever noticed, the ones who lived alone and died alone and had dreams--oh jesus--dreams. They don't stay because they can't leave family or lovers. They don't stay because they died in violence and they want revenge. They stay because they can't believe this is all they get.

* * *

Three things Dean Winchester knows about his mother that he will never say out loud 

1. In two years he will be as old as she was when she died

2. When he remembers her now she's all flat, like a photograph. He can't remember what she smelled like, what it felt like when she touched him. He can't remember the sound of her voice or how she laughed.

3. His mother died alone. They cared like hell, of course, and his father tried, Dean knows he would have saved her if he could. But he didn't. And she died. All alone stuck to the ceiling. Just like those goddamned lonely girls. And nothing fixes that.

One thing he wishes he knew but doesn't

--If she knew the things he's done, would she still love him?

* * *

He kisses her--the I-80 truckstop girl--outside the motel room door and her lips taste like salt and strong coffee. "We don't--" he starts because she's been getting more and more nervous as they get closer to this--an actual room and everything that goes with it. She hasn't said, 'I'm not the kind of girl who does this sort of thing,' but she's not. He can tell. 

"You're beautiful," she says. "Oh god, just once-- Yes." She says. And, "Yes." She kisses him back fiercely, passionately and her left hand slides around his waist and underneath his tee-shirt. She runs her thumb along his spine and he forgets what he was going to say--was he going to say something? Shit.

He tries to unlock the door without turning away from her, but that doesn't work and when he finally turns around, she keeps her hands on him, a couple of fingers through his belt loops, as if she's afraid that physical contact is all that keeps this moment in place. He takes her right hand in his and pulls her into the room where he kisses her again and this time it's him pulling her shirt out of her jeans.

"Oh god," she says.

He walks backward across the room until his knees hit the edge of the bed. His arms are around her waist, but she draws back a little. "It's not because I'm lonely," she says.

"What?" Her neck smells like ginger and lemon.

"Did you know the first motel opened in 1925 in California?"

"_What_?" He tilts his head to the side so he can see her face. What the hell is she talking about? She's looking at the room, which is small and has one king-sized bed with a coverlet that's swirling shades of purple and orange and green.

"A room for the night was a dollar twenty-five," she says and grabs his shirt at the waist like she's hanging on for her life.

"Okay..." he says.

"Being alone," she says, "traveling alone is not the same thing as being lonely."

"I know," he says, "I do." He pulls her shirt the rest of the way out of her jeans and slips his hand up the front and her breasts are just the way he pictured them--round and firm and fine--oh god, yes, so fine.

"It was all horses first and then trains and now it's cars and trucks and motels and nobody knows, we never know--"

He finally steps back, finally hears what she's saying. "We don't have to--"

"No! I mean--" Silence. "God, please. My whole life is talking, it's all talking and I don't want to talk. I mean it's what I do and I know I am. But I want-- If you don't want..."

He kisses her, not to shut her up--well, okay to shut her up--and she kisses him back and it's good, it's really good though he can tell it's an effort for her not to talk, not to push him away or pull him close or make it all about the talking. Because she doesn't know what she's doing, he gets that, though he's pretty sure she's not a virgin, just that she's never had a good time, never done it just for a good time and it's what she wants, what she says she wants and he's going to give her one, the best time she's ever had--and she will _so_ not even have the words to thank him in the morning.

* * *

The Only Thing John Winchester ever told Dean about women and sex and his mother (and jesus if he didn't have enough reasons to be fucked up, this right here, would probably be enough) 

--Keep it in your pants. If you can't keep it in your pants, use protection. And remember, it takes two. Your mother was the greatest...she had this thing she did with her tongue...well, anyway, what I'm saying is make sure and I mean, goddamnit it, Dean, make absolutely sure that what you want is what she wants too.

* * *

She won't look at him in the morning and that's not good, though he can tell she doesn't blame him. She's embarrassed to want something, to go after it, to get it--and because he's a complete and utter stranger--good girls can't want that. He thinks he can make it better if he stays. 

Plus, it's been snowing like a son of a bitch since four and neither of them can go anywhere anyway.

She offers to get another room and he looks at her like she's grown a second head, which makes her laugh. Later, she laughs when they have sex, which he finds both satisfying and encouraging. There's really not anything else to do except go outside into a raging blizzard and get cold and soaking wet, which they do around noon. She pushes him into a snowbank and he grabs her by the waist as he falls and pulls her down on top of him.

Cold hands snake up under his shirt. "My god, you're like a furnace," she says.

"Warmer farther down," he murmurs into her neck and she shivers. He kisses snowflakes off her lashes; her hand slides underneath the waistband of his jeans... And he might have actually been able to get her to do it right there except there's an angry shout from the parking lot and she tumbles off him like either he's on fire or she is.

Later, when the snow has finally stopped, she disappears for a quarter of an hour. He walks to the diner for coffee--to see if she's there. As he's coming out the side door, she pulls him sideways so hard the coffee goes flying, a dark spreading stain in the new snow. They fuck standing up right there against the cold diner wall. She whispers in his ear something he never quite catches about endings and leaving and time.

He wants to tell her no, wants to lie to her with cell phone numbers and email addresses. But he doesn't and he isn't sure afterward if it's because he respected her too much or because her hand down his pants made him lose his mind.

* * *

He met Cassie a year after the I-80 truckstop girl. She was amazing. She was beautiful and smart and she knew what she wanted. But she didn't know him. Didn't want to know him beyond the sharp smile and the charm and the lean strength and the way he knew just the right thing to do in bed. That's why he thinks he told her in the end. Because he knew she couldn't handle it, because he wanted to prove it out in the open, because he wanted it to hurt, because he wanted to feel the pain.

* * *

She still spouts random facts when she gets nervous and over the two days they're together he learns that you're never more than seven miles from a railroad track or a road in Pennsylvania--which might actually be useful to know--that Leroy, NY is the birthplace of Jello, that in 1856, the steamboat Arabia hit a snag and sank along with 400 barrels of Kentucky bourbon in the Missouri River and no one died except a mule. 

And twice he wakes up with his arms around her and her back to him and she's crying--quiet so she won't wake him even though she has--and he knows-- he knows--but he sure as hell doesn't understand.

The morning after the snow stops, she manages to actually leave without waking him--him!--and that takes awhile for him to get his head around. She leaves him a note quoting three different movies but not a word in it that's just her.

Shit, he thinks. And shit.

* * *

It's not that he broke her, it's that she broke herself, threw herself against him before he knew, before he could stop it. And she knew, knew herself, knew him, knew how it would end and she did it anyway. He doesn't understand and he wants to so desperately. He would explode in fucking everlasting gratitude if someone would--jesus--just explain it so he could understand.

* * *

Dean is on his second beer and the band is on a break, when one of the girls he noticed when he first walked in approaches him. She's wearing red cowboy boots that he'd lay odds belong to someone else, a short denim skirt and a tee-shirt with ruffled edges that just skims her waist. He's pretty sure the tee-shirt's not hers either because whenever she thinks no one's looking, she tugs on the hem to pull it down. She's pretty though, fresh-faced with straight blond hair that he would bet serious money is real. She settles with a sort of awkward grace onto the bar stool next to him. 

"Can I buy you a beer?" she asks. "I haven't seen you here before?" which she makes into a question, like someone else told her to say it and she's not sure it's right.

"No," he says and she startles like a deer in headlights. He smiles then and the muscles around her mouth relax. "I mean, you're right, I haven't been in here before."

"Awesome," she says. "Great." Her head bobs up and down. "I'm a grad student down at the U. Can I--" Her eyes shift a fraction of a second to her friends; her right hand plays with the empty ring finger on her left. "Can I buy you that beer?" She smiles like she means it, like she does this all the time.

He gets up off the stool and leans close to her. His lips nearly brush her ear, "Thanks," he says. "Really. But I have to go." He runs his thumb along her cheekbone. He smiles and he means it. He walks away and out the door.

Dean doesn't ever go with girls made out of glass. They're too easy to break. Even when they know. Even when they swear that it's okay, even when they mean it. They still shatter, a thousand pieces, like tears refracting sunlight.


End file.
